A second is too long

I don't intend to "over-dramatize" the situation but I had a fairly scary moment, yesterday. 

I was checking out at an end register at Walmart. My son was standing next to a beverage refrigerator. I looked down at him, to make sure he was close, then I went to scan my debit card to purchase my items. I, then, looked back down toward him only to see empty space where he should have been standing. 

I began searching for him, casually at first, scanning the area, and then, a little more concerned, I proceeded to call for him 

"Gideon? Gideon, where are you?!" 

He didn't answer. 

The concerned cashiers began searching with me and calling for him. 

He still didn't answer.

My heart began to pound. "worst case scenarios" flashed through my head like projector slides. After the eye-opening, heart wrenching recent loss of so many little lives to a monster, I think every mother feels a little "raw". I personally feel like I have been living in a bubble that just "popped". 

Eventually, I found him sitting in the entrance of the store. He stated that he decided to wait for me on the bench. 

This was one of those moments, in which, my first instinct is to loose my temper right there in the middle of the store, with mass amounts of onlookers, but knowing it would not help, I took a deep breath and firmly, but very controlled, reprimanded him. 

On the way out to the van, with Gabby sitting on my hip, and Gideon holding tightly to my hand, I lost it. Tears began streaming down my cheeks. When Gideon asked me what was wrong, I told him how scared I was and that I couldn't bare to loose him. 

Upon seeing me succumb to so much emotion, he professed a lifelong promise to never leave my side. The passion he holds to this promise, will likely fade, maybe even by the next shopping trip, but Mommy won't soon forget that second in which she worried whole-heatedly for the safety of her baby boy.